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In October 2020, Cristal Starling and her former boyfriend’s apartment on West Main Street in New York was raided by the Rochester Police Department because they suspected her boyfriend of being a drug dealer based on narcotics found in another house. During the raid, enforcement failed to find any drugs but seized Starling’s $8,040, along with two vehicles and arrested the boyfriend, believing he was a drug dealer.
Starling claimed that the money belonged to her, and she was saving it to expand her food truck business. After her boyfriend was released from jail and the vehicles were returned, Starling attempted to retrieve her money.
“After trial, I tried to get my money back,” Starling said. “They sent me through this whole process of trying to get it through the courts, and I still did not get it.”
Starling connected with a nonprofit Institute for Justice, an organization that fights against civil forfeiture cases after running into numerous obstacles. One obstacle the woman faced was federal prosecutors claiming they gave her “direct notice” about the process she would need to go through to get her funds returned. They claimed she didn’t follow the procedures and missed numerous deadlines to file claims for her seized money.
Starling stated that she was on vacation when she got the “direct notice,” which she proved. The funds were then divided among other law enforcement departments, which is protocol.
Taking her case to the federal court, Starling was met with defeat when the judge agreed with the prosecutors.
The Institute of Justice released a statement regarding the case, “The government never even tried to show that Cristal had done anything wrong, but it was able to take her money by tying her up in complicated legal procedures.”
According to Starling’s new representation, people who deal with the forfeiture of money get frustrated at the process and give up. Something Starling was not doing.
According to the Institute, some cases have resulted in prosecutors offering half of the money they confiscated from individuals, which is what they tried to provide Starling, but she refused.
“My question to them was if I had already lost all rights to the full amount of currency, and it’s already in default, why would you be offering half of it back?”
Starling plans to appeal the district court’s decision and take it to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
“[Lawyers] get tripped up by the procedures, and they miss a deadline in these super strict rules, an attorney from the nonprofit said. “Oftentimes, the merits of these cases are never heard.”